Where's the fire? Ottawa's top spots for false alarms

The weekends at Cheryl Manuel’s Cedarwood Drive apartment block always seemed to be the worst for the fire alarms.

Sometimes it was twice a day. Once it was three times. And each time the routine would repeat itself.

“You’d go downstairs, you’d wait, false alarm, you’d have to wait for an elevator,” said Manuel. “It just seemed you’d get back upstairs (and) it would go off again.”

But that was life in the apartment building that — up until this year — annually ranked as the Ottawa residential address with the highest number of false alarms each year, according to data provided by Ottawa Fire Services.

The 15-storey building at 2850 Cedarwood Drive had 40 false alarms in 2013. That total was just 23 fewer than the top ranked overall address, Carleton University, which has a sprawling campus of about 40 buildings with science laboratories, restaurants and thousands of visitors and employees.

The Cedarwood Drive building had nearly twice as many false alarms as the next closest residential property, a Bank Street apartment building near the Billings Bridge shopping mall.

On average, there was a false alarm once every 10 days in 2013 at 2850 Cedarwood Drive.

But all that has changed in 2014. In a remarkable turnaround, the building has plummeted down the list of problem addresses. In the first five months of this year, 2850 Cedarwood had exactly one false alarm, according to the fire department.

That’s a steep drop for a building that once got so bad in 2012 that firefighters expressed concern about going there. On at least one occasion, residents tossed items off the balcony at the firefighters below.

Over a six-month period that year, the building had 35 malicious false fire alarms. It has consistently topped the list of the worst residential addresses annually.

It’s a situation that Ottawa fire assistant deputy chief Sean Tracey suggested might have been a symptom of a “general rejection of any sign of authority” by some residents who lived in the building.

“We do from time to time have addresses and locations where people are maliciously pulling alarms,” said Tracey. “This is one. We had a number of ongoing, repeat, malicious nuisance alarms being pulled.”

Blair Spencer, director of Ottawa operations for the building’s owner, Timbercreek Communities, said the company installed eight more surveillance cameras and covered fire pull stations with plastic covers. “You need to go in there and physically pull this off before you can pull the pull station,” said Spencer, adding Timbercreek worked closely and took the advice of Ottawa Fire’s prevention unit.

Spencer said Timbercreek is delighted with the result. The landlord never expected to go from the worst to one of the best, he said.

Across the city, firefighters responded to 8, 130 false alarms in 2013. That is more than a third of the 22,611 total number of calls that the department responded to last year.

The biggest risk with repeat false alarms is that residents become complacent, Tracey said. It is better to be inconvenienced than trapped in a fire.

“We do want them to follow the procedures because, heaven forbid, the one time that they don’t might be the time that saves their life.”

Tracey added that responding to emergency calls increases the risk of injuries to firefighters and the public.

“When an alarm call comes in, we are responding with a number of apparatus as a Priority One call, which means with lights and sirens. That puts both the firefighters at risk as well as the public,” he said.

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The top 10 for 2013

Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Dr., 63

Carleton routinely tops this annual list, but it has as more to do with the fact there are approximately 40 buildings sharing one civic address than a rampant unwillingness to minimize false alarm calls.
“All of our top 10 lists, the majority of those are campuses, like Carleton University, the hospitals, and the reason for that is they have one civic address, but they might have – in Carleton University’s case – 40 different fire alarm systems,” said Tracey.

Tracey said Carleton wasn’t helped by a large amount of construction work in 2013. The university and fire department are working together to better train each other on how the systems work to avoid false alarms altogether, reduce the number and clear false alarms faster, Tracey said.

Montfort Hospital, 713 Montreal Rd. — 49

2850 Cedarwood Dr. — 40

St. Laurent Shopping Mall, 1200 St. Laurent Blvd. — 31

Rideau Centre, 50 Rideau St. — 30
The St. Laurent Shopping Centre and Rideau Centre both made the list for false alarms in 2013. Tracey said ongoing construction at both sites contributed to the total, since dust or workers can sometimes accidentally trigger an alarm.

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